TRACKRS On the Cold Trail of a Serial Killer

"TRACKRS: On the Cold Trail of a Serial Killer" is the true account of the modern day pursuit of a serial killer who terrorized Orange County, California in the late 1970s. The victims were young females living in apartments, alone when they were attacked. Their murders were gruesome and brutal. All had been sexually assaulted. Beginning in October of 1995, two Orange County deputy district attorneys, Michael Jacobs and Mel Jensen, focus their review of homicide cases on seven cases (six being homicides) that took place in three cities in Orange County. The cases are strikingly similar. There has already been a conviction in one of the cases. The defendant is in state prison and has always maintained his innocence. Jacobs and Jensen doubt he is a serial killer. After months of delay caused by the Orange County Sheriff's DNA Laboratory's refusal to process evidence from four of the crime scenes, a DNA profile of the suspect is finally obtained. A potential suspect is a former United States Marine sergeant who had been convicted in 1980 of the kidnapping and rape of a thirteen-year-old girl. On June 14, 1996, three detectives from the Costa Mesa and Tustin police departments travel to Avenal State Prison to interview the suspect.

The author was born in New York City, grew up on Long Island, N.Y., and has been a resident of California since 1967. He attended Occidental College and Loyola University School of Law in Los Angeles. He was admitted to practice law in California in December, 1974 and also was admitted to practice in the U.S District Court for the Central District of California and in the U.S. Supreme Court. His first employment after graduation was as an associate attorney with the Los Angeles general civil litigation firm, Bodkin, Breslin & Luddy. From 1975 until 2006, with two breaks in 1989-1990 and 2001 to 2003, he was employed as a deputy and assistant district attorney with the Orange County District Attorney's office.
During his career with the District Attorney's Office, he was assigned to nearly all vertical prosecution teams, and worked for thirteen years in the Homicide Unit. Highlights of his career as a prosecutor included being the trial attorney for six capital cases which resulted in five death penalty verdicts and being chosen as Prosecutor of the Year in 1996. He also successfully prosecuted the first case in Orange County utilizing DNA evidence, the second case under the new death penalty laws, the first case under the Three Strikes legislation, and the first case in which a defendant driving a motor vehicle was convicted of second degree murder.
In 1996 his efforts led to the creation of Orange County's first unsolved homicide project "TRACKRS." This project's initial investigation solved six homicides from the 1970s and also resulted in the exoneration and freedom from prison of a man wrongly convicted of one of them. A few years later, he helped to create the Orange County Innocence Project. This was a program by which prisoners sentenced to state prison from Orange County, without the assistance of counsel, could petition the District Attorney's Office for an evidentiary review of either DNA or newly discovered physical evidence that could prove their innocence.
Mr. Jacobs retired from the District Attorney's Office in 2006 and is presently engaged in a private civil practice in Orange County, California.